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Comment We're all okay with this? (Score 1) 16

Where are all the comments pointing out that the vigilante is breaking the law? Where are the questions about whether courts should allow some law breakers and not others?

If the vigilante is discovered to be a part of the original malicious botnet crew who had a change of heart, do they still get our approval?

AC, it's your time to shine! Are you a vigilante? THE vigilante? When someone takes credit for this, how do we respond?

Comment Re:Bye-bye French media (Score 2) 183

Bing could afford to do so, and they've been desperate for a way to claw some of the market share away from Google since inception. What I will be watching is if Bing is willing to pay trivial amounts just to see if they can put Google in a squeeze.

Of course the more likely outcome is that even with Bing paying the ransom, nobody will hear about it and nobody will care.

Comment Re:I guess I need to start looking for a replaceme (Score 1) 27

Ditto. I've loved it, paid for it, recommended it to friends. It's amazing how much a decade has reversed my feelings about Microsoft and Apple. I tried several of the recommended other apps here and gotta say, there is a reason I liked Dark Sky better. Now I'm using something I found in the play store named "Weather Forecast - Weather Live & Radar & Widget" which I immediately dislike as a name, but at least it has a reasonable interface.

Comment Re:Clown World (Score 2) 144

Yup. The problems are real. Yet the right to buy something myself and then sell it to someone else is a fiercely guarded right. We already have laws aimed at preventing misrepresentation in the marketplace. We don't have that many against people being stupid when complaining. The right to run your mouth is often offensive, but pretty central to our democracy.

Laws preventing people from buying and selling what they buy are dangerous.

Laws against people complaining are dangerous.

If you're absolutely set on preventing apps from contributing to secondary sales of restaurant food, the only way I can see it is to require a badge "Not affiliated with this establishment" be prominently displayed with any menu where there is no agreement between the food buyer and the food seller.

You work on that. Meanwhile, I'm going to be working on starting a food delivery company comprised of people who buy the food who are also members of a protected class.

Comment Re:#fakenews "Refused to help" (Score 1) 195

I've seen this debate so many times. Too many.

Apple can sign software the phone will accept as boot code. The ability to try infinite combinations is only prevented by code Apple could replace. The FBI already made that argument in court. They could just demand that key rather than enlist Apple writing code. Whether they could get a court to force Apple to provide the signing key, allowing the FBI to write the code, is a question that has not yet been answered.

Not only that, a university has succeeded in decryption without a signing key. They pulled a chip with encrypted data, set up a cloning tool, ran the brute force decryption, cloning happening at each lock point, and proved it is possible to decrypt phones like this with sufficient tech and care.

The problem with this argument happening in public space (over and over) is that you have five sides.

  • Side 1) People who know decryption with warrants can be done but know it is a terrible idea and will be abused
  • Side 2) People who want to prevent and punish crime, particularly terrorism and child abuse, but know it is unconstitutional.
  • Side 3) People who don't care either way
  • Side 4) People who too clueless to know there are arguments
  • Side 5) People who have swallowed the lies told by the first two groups

For the longest time, I've believed ignorance was the prevailing state, but now I'm coming to believe this argument being repeated so many times is something else. I'm starting to believe that the drivers of this debate are fully aware of the lies they are telling and don't care.

Comment Watching Al Pacino dance (Score 1) 138

I'm watching Stand Up Guys as I post. When I started, Al Pacino was dancing. Now they just stole a car. It's a good movie, I'm enjoying it. If you're tracking the time, you'll note that I've spent a lot of time between sentences. I've spent a lot more reading. Minutes pass, I rad a sentence here, I read a sentence there. I click a thing and more minutes have passed. I'm giving 90% of my focus to the movie. In bits and pieces, I read and write. My wife says something, and we pause the movie and talk.

Screen 1 is the movie on my computer. Screen 2 is slashdot. Screen three is the occasional attention to my phone. My computer. My monitors. My phone. They are my things and they display what I want, when I want, in the way I want. I control the media. I am not controlled by the media.

Priorities. Wife: 100%. Movie: 80%. Slashdot: 10%. Phone 1%. That's not a mathmatical equation, it's a priority breakdown. The grand thing about our modern age is that I can consume information on my terms, the way I decide to, rather than how it is fed to me. It's time to pause, feed the dog, and talk a little. The amazing thing is that it is all in my control, and it's not a bad thing, rather it is glorious.

And to all the people who think you should consume as you're fed: sorry, that world where you must do as you're told has passed. I read, I write, I watch, I converse... all on my own schedule, all in my own hands as I determine, as I prefer. I love books and often read for hours without distraction. Sometimes I play music as I read. Sometimes I read as I wait for important interruptions.

The great revolution of my generation is to change the focus from one where you watch TV as you are fed TV back to one where you read the book when you feel like reading the book. Only now it applies to so much more than books.

Comment Re:grep (Score 1) 164

Kudos points? I have none, but if I did, I'd have given you all of them. Your post is the most accurate answer I could have, should have, but failed to imagine. To you, I would have given every single kudos point, every internet point, every accolade I've ever given. Stunningly, I saw one better.

What could be better? Calling CowboyNeal personally.

Comment Re:Golly Badly written poll. (Score 1) 164

I came here to say the same thing, or if nobody had said it, to say it myself. You said it better. I grant you one internet bonus point because your link to 'Jacked Up' was pretty funny.

I use DDG on my mobile (work issued) and Google most of the time on my personal PC. My reasons are personal, not secret, but boring. However, recently, I had a task of finding the origin of an image I felt compelled to complete in order to impress my wife. Normally I would have given up nearly immediately but she appreciates nerd cred, so I was more persistent than normal people would consider reasonable. When google and tineye failed me after many, many varying attempts, I finally found success with Bing. Yes my fellow /. denizen, I sank that low to ensure my wife would consider me sufficiently nerdy to deserve her appreciation.

I think any person who can name a single search engine as the one they use is not a true geek, certainly not a nerd. That said, two other comments I found here convinced me that I had failed to elevate myself to alpha-nerd status. One suggested the best answer was grep. That person deserves an alpha-nerd award of some type. All the internet points (-1) to you sir. The other suggested calling Cowboy Neil directly. You sir are a god among men. My hats are all off to you, may you reign in peace and war, in all matters of nerd or geekdom, forever.

Comment Re:Hope can be bitter (Score 1) 377

Killing off their phone business. Making Windows 10 a free upgrade. Making it a rolling update system. Requiring people to update it. Moving their business model to focus on business rather than consumer income.

That's off the top of my head, and of course I said things to win me over, not things to win over the ACs on Slashdot.

Comment Hope can be bitter (Score 2, Interesting) 377

Microsoft could really change some minds and win some hearts. They've done a lot of good things, and Satya Nadella has done a lot to win me over. I wanted to love Edge, and I've tried over and over, but never succeeded. If Microsoft is really willing to change their course, this could be a huge step in winning me, and people like me back.

Unfortunately I can't forget the past. Twenty years of pain and suffering from their decisions has made me reluctant to trust them. I can't help but remember all the things they've done to abuse their customers. I was a Linux at home guy for decades thanks to Microsoft failing to provide a system I could really make do what I wanted or needed. I've been on Windows 10 at home for nearly a year now and thanks to WSL and Chrome, I almost don't miss it. Give me bash and Chrome and they're getting close. An abused dog takes a long time to learn to trust. We've all been the abused dog by Microsoft, we want to love and hope, we want to believe. This time, we hope it will be different, but we don't trust easily.

Comment Re:the 'm' subdomain? Never heard of it. (Score 3, Insightful) 144

Not that you're generally wrong, but I would like to contest a minor point.

Chrome is built for the end user consumer market.

I think the better description would be to say Chrome is marketed to consumers. It's a subtle difference, but I think it leaves the clarity to say specifically that Chrome is built to further Google's goals. One of Google's main goals is to get consumers to use their system.

We've all seen people go to google.com to search for facebook rather than going to facebook.com directly. That's a win for Google. Google would really win if people forgot URLs exist. Then the only way to get to any website would be by having Google search for it, at least for most people. How could that happen? In small steps where first the http or https is hidden since most people don't know or care why it exists. Then after people get used to that, the next step is to hide other parts of the URL that people don't care to understand. Subdomains mean nothing to most people, TLDs are next. Really, what's the difference for most people? That's where Chrome is headed and what it is built for.

The real tragedy is that most people will be happier with it.

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